Tag Archives: Healthcare

by Andrew Sprung The latest scam in healthcare involves being enrolled in a different healthcare plan than what you initially enrolled in the beginning, The new ACA plan which will not be as good as the one you had. How easy is it for someone to do so to the enrollee? It can be done by using a person’s name, date of birth, and state. The licensed agent can access a policyholder’s coverage through the federal exchange or its direct enrollment...

I first caught up with this article on MedPage Today, “Doc Blows Whistle on Cigna.” I also read the ProPublic report. Both are reporting on denial of claims before and after treatment and the productivity of claims reviewers. Additionally, the report discusses the use of labor (nurses, etc.) outside of the US to evaluate claims and their errors. All of these attempts are examples of what is going on to cuts costs by reducing the time to decide on...

 – by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog On Friday the CDC updated its COVID death statistics through March 31, which means that we now have 4 full years of data. It also updated its hospitalization data through April 20, and to cut to the chase, last week saw a record low hospitalizations for COVID – 5,615 – since its onset. So this is a good time to look at the state of the now-endemic pandemic. When it comes to both hospitalization and...

SWI swissinfo.ch An interesting story coming out of Switzerland about Nestlé. In 2017 Nestlé adds sugar to baby food in low-income countries, report finds . . . made the following plan: Between 2017 and 2020 we want to reduce the added sugar in our products by a further 5%. In 2017 alone, Nestlé Switzerland withdrew 111 tonnes of sugar from its products, which is the equivalent of 22 million teaspoons or 444 million kcal. Much work had already...

by Matthew Cunnigham – Cook The problems with Medicare Advantage is coding and pricing for care. And Fee for Service participants pay for the MA costs even though they do not use MA. “When accounting for favorable selection of enrollees in MA and higher MA coding intensity, we estimate Medicare spends approximately 22 percent more for MA enrollees. This spend is more than if those beneficiaries were a part of FFS Medicare. The difference...

A high court decision in favor of Idaho puts at risk the federal government’s ability to set national environmental, labor and consumer protection standards. by Merrill Goozner Angry Bear can not add to Merrill’s remarks on Idaho’s stance banning abortion in almost all circumstances and their claims to preempt the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. Until it is them who are endangered will we find the rules (which they...

by Suzanne Gordon and Steve Early Washington Monthly Trump has mocked veterans and privatized their health care. Biden honors them but hasn’t challenged Trump’s privatization policies. Currently, they are moving more and more veterans to commercial healthcare. This rather than restoring VA healthcare to a better place for veterans to be and at a lower cost. Think of Medicare Advantage. From mocking John McCain’s military service...

Decades ago, the artificial sweetener cyclamate was banned because it caused bladder cancer in rats. Later, it turned out that this was an artifact of (1) the tendency of cyclamate to form a precipitate with the male rat urinary globulin in the bladder, which leads to inflammation and promotes cancer, and (2) the fact that experiments were only done with male rats. Are cyclamates dangerous for humans? Who knows? The lesson here is not that we should...

By annie annieasksyou . . . Angry Bear lacks a woman writer. In the past we had several excellent writers. They offer a different perspective than my writing gymnastics or Joels for that matter. I am happy to have Joel offer up his words on other topics. If you are bold enough to plunge into Angry Bear’s environment, we would love to have you aboard. Meanwhile, enjoy Annie from Annie Asks You on this Sunday morning. ~~~~~~~~ And JUST...

Visiting writer’s commentary on Sovereign Citizens by Infidel753 from his own Blog of similar name. Readers may be unfamiliar with the “sovereign citizen” movement, a fringe ideological belief system which asserts (for complex, fatuous, and extremely boring reasons) that certain everyday laws either do not exist, are not real laws, or at least don’t apply to individuals who assert some imaginary special status that makes them exempt. In...